Weather for pressing:
dry, with bees.
Motto: “slightly airborne
since 1994.”
Tipsy Bee Farms · Rogue Valley, Oregon
Being an honest account of the farm’s provisions — honeys, meads & pickles — set in type and priced in dollars, the meads excepted.
No. 4 — pressed summer 2026 Medford, Ore. Price: one good story, told properly
Everything on this sheet was grown, gathered, or brined within a short walk of the kitchen door. Great‑grandfather raised Comice pears by the mountain‑load; Curtis built a human‑powered helicopter and pedaled it off the floor of a Boeing hangar; we put up pickles. The family regards this as a lateral move.*
“Quantities are what they are. When a jar is gone, it is gone until the valley makes more of whatever went into it — and the valley will not be hurried, and neither, frankly, will we.”
— the family, over the crocks
Dept. of Bees — drawn from the comb, poured unhurried
Limnanthes alba — a seed crop the neighbors rotate through the valley floor, and the bees commute to it like a job they love. Tastes, truly, of toasted marshmallow; we did not believe it either, and now we keep a jar by the coffee. Raw, unfiltered, inclined to candy slowly.
Lot 12 · 12 oz hex jar · pulled late June · forty hives consulted
Whatever bloomed between the ditch and the fence line, in the order the bees preferred it. Darker by August, lighter by June. The bees do not take requests, and after some reflection, neither do we.†
No. 7 · 12 oz hex jar · a different honey every year, on purpose
One narrow week of pear bloom in April, from the rows great‑grandfather planted in the twenties. Pale, quiet, faintly pear‑skin at the finish. The old orchard is down to its last tree, so this is less a product than a fond annual argument with time.‡
Lot 4 · 8 oz jar · short supply · bottled small so more people get some
Dept. of Fermentation — the family reserve · brewed for our own table, not for sale
Wildflower honey and well water, fermented slow and racked patient. Dry as a family joke, gold as four o’clock in August. Serve cool, not cold; it has feelings.
Batch T‑7 · 750 ml · two winters in glass · 12.5% abv
Mead made on orchard fruit is called cyser, and we will keep saying so, politely, to anyone who asks at the market table.§ Comice pear and cider apple under the honey; finishes crisp, with a little orchard tannin to keep everyone honest.
Batch C‑3 · 750 ml · pressed October · oaked lightly, out of respect
Laid down each year on the 27th of August, the anniversary of the day the Tipsy Bee — Curtis’s human‑powered helicopter — got its skids off the concrete of a Boeing hangar. Aged roughly ten thousand times longer than the flight itself.‖ Bottled in 500 ml, because reverence.
Batch HR‑94 · 500 ml · laid down in August
Spoken forDept. of Brine — the pickle pivot, continued
Cucumbers off the bottom field, brined in the stoneware by the cellar stairs, with dill gone properly to seed and enough garlic to be honest about it. Fermented, never vinegared. The crunch is load‑bearing.
Crock 2 · quart · salt at 3.5% · cellar‑cool since July
Sweet, sharp, sliced thin. Canon requires them on a ham sandwich; science has not located a better use, though we fund ongoing research at lunch.
Packed August · pint · grandmother’s ratio, unimproved since 1962
Named for the helicopter: it, too, gets briefly airborne and comes down with a story. Garlic dills under Fresno chile and a rumor of habanero. Curtis’s rule applies to aircraft and pickles alike — if your eyes water, it’s working.¶
Lot 94 · pint · wear something washable
Sold from the farm stand under the walnut tree, and Saturdays at the Medford growers’ market. The internet is not yet brine‑proof; come by instead.